The Way to Life Goes through Death

Matt
16:24-27 TNIV: Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever
wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will
lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What
good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your
soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul? For the Son
of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his
angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they
have done.

In
the kingdom of God the way to life goes through death.

Jesus
says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save
their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will
find it.”

The
kingdom of God is bizarro world. Whoever is concerned to secure
their own life, will lose it. But the one that actually loses his
own life, is the one that finds it.

A
seeker once gave a report of his quest. First, I tried to find
myself, but I never succeeded. Then I sought for God, but I did
not find him. Finally, I pursued the good of my neighbor, and then
I found all three. Many people have experienced that when they did
everything they could to be happy, they could never find
happiness. But when they tried to make others happy, they found
it.

This
has perhaps been most beautifully expressed in the prayer of St.
Francis of Assissi:

Lord,
make me an instrument of Your peace

Where there is hatred let
me sow love

Where there is injury,
pardon

Where there is doubt, faith

Where there is despair,
hope

Where there is darkness,
light and where there is sadness, joy.

O Lord, grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled but to console

To be understood as to
understand

To be loved as to love

For it is in giving that I
receive

It is in pardoning that I
am pardoned;

And it is in dying that I
am born to eternal life. Amen.

The
way to life goes through death. That is the principle that applies
in the kingdom of God. When Jesus talks about cross and death he
is first and foremost talking about his own death. In another
instance, Jesus says that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the
ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it
produces many seeds (John 12:24). Just as when the kernel of wheat
falls to the ground and dies to produce many seeds that are a
hundred times more bountiful than the one kernel, so it is also in
the kingdom of God. This applies first and foremost to Jesus
himself. He did not have to die. He was the only human being who
has ever lived and over whom death had no power. But he gave his
life freely. For if Jesus had not died not very much would have
come out of it. Then he could not have saved us. Then he would
have been alone in heaven. Then there would have remained a single
seed, as he says. But because Jesus died and rose again, he bore a
lot of fruit. Then he could save a people for himself so that
there is a great host, a great congregation that Jesus saved for
heaven.

Jesus’
way to save human beings went through death. In the same way for
us, our way to salvation goes through death. John 12:25: Those who
love their life will lose it, while those who hate their life in
this world will keep it for eternal life. This goes deeper than to
die from our own self, that our egotism and selfishness must die.
Something inside of us must die. It is our faith in ourselves that
has to die. For the kingdom of God is bizarro world. Everywhere
else we hear that the most important thing is to have faith in
yourself. And that is true, as far as it goes. In Norway we have
something that we call “Janteloven.” The first
commandment is that you shall not believe that you are anything.
There is actually no one who requires that we keep this, but is
something like an invisible, unwritten law. It is just there. You
shall not believe that you are anything. You shall not believe
that anybody cares about you.

This
is a terrible law. And it runs directly contrary to what Jesus
says. He says that every individual human being is so precious
that there is nothing in the whole world so valuable that it
compares to the value of a human being. That is why it is so
important that we take good care of the life that God has given to
us.

And,
strangely, Jesus says that we can only take really good care of
this life if we lose it. If we deny ourselves and take up our
cross and follow him.

That
means that we have to get to the point where we count ourselves as
nothing. We must count ourselves as dead, spiritually speaking, as
rubbish, as Paul says when he has listed all everything that he
has of which to boast in himself. But whatever were gains to me I
now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider
everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I
consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ (Phil 3:7-8).

Paul
thought at one point that accomplish something that was good
enough for God. He thought that his own accomplishments and his
own religion could make him acceptable to God. He thought that in
himself there was material that he could cultivate so that he
could be accepted by God. He thought that he had it in him to be
saved. But when he met Jesus he had to count everything that he
had accomplished, all his good works, everything that was grounded
in himself, as a loss. His faith in himself died. For he saw that
there was nothing good in himself. He not only saw that he
occasionally did not succeed in doing good. But the state of the
matter is that nothing good lives in him (Rom 7:18).

There
was nothing in himself that he could build on. There was nothing
to be found in himself. There was nothing of his own that he could
hold up to God and say: “This, this is good enough. This is
my good intention or my good will.” Or: “this shows
that I am really a good person.” No, he had nothing of which
he could boast. Something with which to be pleased before God and
hope that God would also be pleased with it. Because he realized
that he was not really a good person. He was really a bad person.
His own self had to be counted as rubbish, he had to count himself
as trash, when it came to doing something that was good enough for
God. That was when he died. He came to this conclusion: I know
that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature as he
says in Romans (7:18).

If
you think this is a hard teaching, then I will ask you to try for
one day to honor others more than yourself. Let the concern for
others be your first priority in everything you do for a full day.
Not your own wish to be liked by others. Not your own need to have
others appreciate you. But really - others - no matter what they
think about you. Not only the ones you like but also the ones you
don’t like. The ones you can’t stand. Honor them more
yourself. That was the standard that Jesus set. When he came to
earth he was disliked and despised. In the end he was taken to die
on a cross. But one of the very last things people heard him say
before he died was: “Father, forgive them, for they do not
know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). He honored his
killers more than himself. Try to do that for one full day and I
can guarantee you that will soon agree with the apostle Paul: I
know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.

To
gain Christ’s righteousness means that we can stand in God’s
judgment being as perfect as Jesus himself. That means that we can
forget everything we are and everything we have done and instead
we can point to Jesus and say: What Jesus is and what Jesus has
done count for me.

If
we were to come to God and say: “God, you can let me into
heaven because I have been so good,” then we would have had
a very uncertain hope of entering. Yes, the word of God tells us
that if we want to approach God that way, then we can be certain
that we are lost. But instead we can approach God and say: “God,
you have to let me into heaven because Jesus has been so good,”
then you can be absolutely certain: heaven is wide open for you.
Jesus has opened heaven. That is why it is with ease and joy that
we count all our own accomplishments and our own goodness as
rubbish. Because we will rather gain Christ and be found in him,
not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but
that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that
comes from God and is by faith (Phil 3:9).

The
last few weeks before my father died, about seven years ago, he
was plagued by doubt. He was no longer able to have faith and he
felt that he fell short. My mother has told me that she would
recite to him a verse from a hymn, with a simple phrase: To have
faith is to rest in his completed work. Then my father exclaimed:
Oh, now I got my faith back. It is finished.

Later
on he would repeat this very often. He was constantly reminded
that he had not done enough good during his lifetime. He could
have done so much more, there were so many people he knew that he
could have been good to, there were so many good causes that he
could have donated more money to. But he always came back to the
same point. Jesus has finished everything. Everything is finished.
It does not rest on me.

This
is how it is when we lose our own life. We lose our faith in
ourselves. We lose faith that we have been good Christians. We
lose faith that there is anything good in ourselves. We end up in
the position that Paul was: Everything that he had accomplished in
life, everything that he used to be pride of, now he counted all
of it as nothing, as rubbish. He lost his own life. But, as he
adds, to gain Christ is much more worth. Because he has finished
everything.

The
way to life goes through death. When we realize that we have
nothing in ourselves that we can rely on. We are simply not able
to be good Christians. We are not able to die away from our own
selfishness. We are not able to honor others more than ourselves.
There is simply nothing in ourselves that we can build upon.
Because we are dead. And where we are dead, God creates life. For
God gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though
they were (Rom
4:17-21). That we can believe, against all hope.

To
a greater or lesser degree God will also let us experience that
our life here on earth is a life under the cross. The one who
wants to follow Jesus has to share his destiny. Many experienced
Christians can testify about this. They have seen that through
their sufferings in life they have met Jesus. They have
experienced that when they have nothing else to hold on to, then
they have Jesus and his love. And that is enough.

The
Bible says that physical death is the last enemy. But Jesus has
swallowed death up in victory. For those who believe in Jesus
physical death is the entryway into the resurrection from the
dead. To describe the glory that awaits God’s children, Paul
uses the image of the seed that is sown. When it is sown it is
only the one seed. But when the seed dies the plant grows with a
splendor that no one could even dream of, if they only considered
the little seed that was sown. That is how the future is that
God’s children are expecting. When our life here on earth
perishes that is the beginning of a glory that we cannot even
begin to understand. It is as if someone that was born blind gets
to see. As when a deaf begins to hear. It is as when the dead wake
up. That is how it will be in the resurrection. That joy goes
beyond what we can understand.